


The Art of War - Strategy I: Four Steps & a Breath

by inkstone



Category: Samurai Deeper Kyo
Genre: Chromatic Source, Community: 30_kisses, F/M, abandoned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-23
Updated: 2005-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 21:36:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkstone/pseuds/inkstone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the sun sets and night falls, sometimes Yuya dreams of nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of War - Strategy I: Four Steps & a Breath

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 30 Kisses.

After the sun sets and night falls, sometimes Yuya dreams of nothing.

She thanks whatever powers watch over her for those rare nights. They offer a precious gift. Becoming a bounty hunter had served as a means to an end; she needed the money to survive on her own and find her brother's killer. It was a rewarding profession -- bringing in murderers, rapists, and thieves, then collecting the bounties on their heads.

She never expected their faces to haunt her dreams.

It's not the faces of her bounties that plague her. If only it were that easy. Instead she sees the criminals' victims -- brutalized women, dead children, and everything in between. Because sometimes she arrives a step too late.

True, those men would have committed their crimes anyway. They were bounties for a reason. But logic quails before the onslaught of memory and justifications do not ease her conscience. Every woman and child she fails to save is a painful reminder of the night her brother died, of the night she became who and what she was: Sixteen years old, and four breaths away from oblivion.

Yuya does not sleep much.

More often than not, on those nights when she does sleep, when the moon rises and the nightingales cry, Yuya dreams of pressing her tri-barreled gun against Kyoshiro's right temple and pulling the trigger.

Then she wakes and remembers the bounty on Kyoshiro's head. More importantly, she recalls the bounty on Onime no Kyo's head, which dwarfs anything she has ever collected before -- singular and combined. Two men, one body -- it is possible, she tells herself. It is possible. She can collect the bounty of both their heads and continue on her way. That would bring her a step closer to finding the man with the scar on his back.

Tonight is a night when all prayers to Baku go answered and sleep eludes her. Instead she sits in the darkness, taking comfort from the gun she holds in her hand. It has remained her only faithful companion throughout the years.

Kyoshiro sleeps nearby. Drool trails down his chin as he rolls over, limbs flung out carelessly. A lecherous expression fills his face. No doubt Kyoshiro dreams of the last brothel he visited when he thought her otherwise occupied.

Her fingers tighten upon the gun as she watches Kyoshiro's face. His features are unguarded in sleep, open to anyone who chooses to read what lays there. Kyoshiro looks so innocent and not for the first time, Yuya wonders how a harmless medicine peddler came to share a body with the soul of a heartless killer.

_Beg._

False bravado and iron determination aside, Yuya knows she needs to tread carefully where Onime no Kyo is concerned. Her gaze falls upon the sword resting by Kyoshiro, bound and tied as if that is enough to imprison the demon within his body. But when his life is threatened, the demon comes out. In the end, Onime no Kyo does not wish to die.

Despite her best efforts, Yuya sympathizes with that. She has many things to accomplish before she can die as well.

_The weak are prey for the strong. _

It is a risk. It is a great risk to continue traveling with Kyoshiro when the greatest killer ever known sleeps within his body. Yuya knows she should take Kyoshiro and the demon who shares his body and collect the bounty on both their heads.

But Onime no Kyo knows who killed her brother. Yuya does not know how. She does not know why. And she does not care.

Onime no Kyo _knows_.

Gun held loosely in her right hand, Yuya stands and crosses the distance separating her from Kyoshiro. In four breaths, she raises the gun. Over the barrel, she sights the center of Kyoshiro's forehead. The promise of death summons Onime no Kyo. And if he comes forth, what would she do? Ask him what he knows?

Her right hand shakes and the barrel wobbles.

It had taken so little effort for him. One cut and men had died. One strike and swords had broken. One slash and the fabric of her ruined kimono had parted so easily.

_It may please you to know that you are only the second person whose life I have spared._

Yuya takes pride in her strength and independence. She relies on no one but herself. But trapped between a tree and Onime no Kyo's menacing body, Yuya realizes that while she has encountered all matter of men in her life, he is something else entirely.

Because Onime no Kyo's breath upon her exposed breasts promised more of a threat than any clumsy groping she experienced from Kyoshiro. Because his lips so near hers - four breaths away from being a lover's kiss -- spout words that both repulsed and attracted her.

The same body, the same face, but a world of difference lies between Kyo and Kyoshiro, more than could be explained by eye color.

Yuya breathes shakily and lowers the gun to her side.

Kyoshiro is familiar and safe. Kyoshiro, she understands and knows how to handle.

Onime no Kyo, she does not. Onime no Kyo is a man she does not want to face alone.

Yuya tells herself that is a fear she must overcome if she wants to grow stronger. Every man she outwits and defeats is a step closer to finding her brother's killer. She abandoned the life that could have been hers -- the life of a normal girl -- for that single goal in life. Yuya does not have time to regret.

But a part of her knows that it isn't a fear of Onime no Kyo as a _killer_ that frightens her. And that thought scares her so much, she pushes it deep down into the recesses of her heart where no one can find it. Not even herself.

So instead Yuya tucks the guns into her yukata and turns away. A step later and she returns to the spot where she first started. Yuya drops down, draws her knees up to her chin, and wraps her arms around her bent legs. She closes her eyes, hoping. The oblivion of sleep awaits only four breaths away.

She still waits when the sun rises above the horizon.


End file.
